Consultation on Durham County Council Draft Cycling Strategy

I became aware of this group through posts on websites like road.cc & 'as easy as riding a bike' and I thought as people concerned about the quality of cycling infrastructure you would be interested (if you weren't already aware) that Durham County Council have put their draft Cycling Strategy out to consultation.

I know the officer responsible and she said that she wants as much feedback as possible from as many different sources to improve the strategy. Her desire is to provide facilities over & above those suggested by LTN 2/08 and I thought members of the group may well be interested & well qualified in making comments and suggestions for improvements. In light of DCC's recent plan to build a 2 mile bypass at a cost £31m with a shared use footpath at one side, I think she'll need all the support she can get.

My work BUG is signed up to the Newcastle Cycling Campaign, so I'm aware of the work that you do on Tyneside to improve provision there, so it was good to get a response from someone who knows what they are talking about, I hope you've emailed it to prow@durham.gov.uk (closing date May 2nd :) )

I asked DCC what their initial thoughts were on the consultation for the Draft Cycling Strategy and I thought you might be interested in the highlights of their response below:

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There was an extraordinary response. I'm really delighted to get such helpful and positive support for the strategy. As I'm sure you're aware it will only help the argument to support cycling and cycling schemes if there is such interest.

There are approx 50 responses, which may not sound a lot but it's over twice as many responses as DCC received for LTP3, so I'm over the moon!

Most responses are supportive, a couple anti-cycling, a few mentions of CROW (we're going to buy it online. Hopefully we'll be enlightened), LTN, overall lots of people with their own views and as you'd expect strong opinions on specific aspects of cycling. Many of the responses seem to see the strategy is a step in the right direction and understand that more will come.

Interesting was the number of mentions about cycling culture and especially the responses from female cyclists about getting verbally abused by motorists on a regular basis. One respondent pointed out they were actually embarrassed to take their visitors cycling in Durham because of the awful attitude of motorists. It makes me more determined to try to tackle it.